Thursday, 19 June 2014

There is very little activity at the edge of the woods this summer in comparison to previous years.
I left the camera for 48 hours and captured very little.
The roe deer and the badgers are ranging elsewhere.
Perhaps the work undertaken on deepening and clearing the ditch disturbed their settled routine. We may have to wait a year or two for a new pattern to emerge.

Meanwhile the young fox with the distinctive tail marking (a 2014 cub) is still thriving and the Muntjak stag had a good look at the camera and later nuzzled it, so he is no longer phased by its presence. A female Muntjak also passed by some hours later.

Meanwhile the Appleyard duck hatched 2 of her eggs and within a day had lost one of the ducklings. Deciding she was not a very good mother I have attempted to integrate the remaining duckling with the 2 call ducklings hatched by the brown hen. initial results look hopeful.

Monday, 16 June 2014

Last evening I strolled across the Bean field (via the wild life tracks) with Barney and my tiny HD video camera. Unlike the previous evening (when I did not have the camera) we did not see the 2 Muntjak deer or the Roe deer stag.

Barney is very good at watching deer and will not chase them so long as I tell him to be quiet and watch, but then I know they can easily out run him.

He is trained to chase rabbits (who damage the garden), Squirrels (who pinch the nuts) and foxes (who kill and eat our hens and ducks) but in every case they can out run and out manoeuvre him. And the exercise does him good.

He has only once met a Badger as far as I know and it was a slightly alarming stand off in the pitch black of night. I could not see, but judging by the noises, the badger did not run so Barney did not chase then the Badger made a bolt for freedom and Barney chased half heartedly and came back to me with lots of swagger as if he had won a great battle of will but I think was relieved.

So as we walked along the field hedge towards the Badger Sett I peered through the trees to see two Badger Cubs were up and out of the sett only feet from me and on course to meet Barney within seconds. You can see what happened in the next few moments here:-

Sunday, 8 June 2014

This morning Barney and I set off to recover the SD card from the camera on the Badger Sett.
Glorious sunshine!
First he cleared the fish pond of the pesky heron.
Card collected we returned across the bean field and saw a pair of Roe deer down by the woods.
I settled squatting at the end of my mowed path and Barney came and watched with his front paws on my knee so he could see as the Roes slowly made their way towards us on the field margin.
With the firm but light breeze in our faces the deer got to within 15 feet of us before they saw us.
Magic!
They high tailed it back to the woods and we returned for breakfast.
After which I found I had lots of footage of the Badgers. The cubs are almost full grown and Mum & Dad set about a well deserved cuddle and no doubt considered making some more cubs for next year.

Thursday, 5 June 2014

The camera has been positioned to look at an animal path across the bean field several times recently to see what is using it. Often the results have been poor to bad but then in the last 24 hours I caught loads.